In this post I go to Cork!

Saturday, after the "Wet-n-Wild European Business Pros & Accounting Hos" Party, Joe, Derrick, Adam, and Jake decided to take the DART to somewhere on Ireland's beautiful east coast. Hating and fearing trains not painted a comforting yellow-and-mauve, I announced that I was going to Cork.

Ahh, Cork. Where the men are men and the sheep are nervous.

I took the bus, which was great because it passes through mile-after-mile of beautiful hillside and quaint scenic villages with creative pub names. Unfortunately, after four hours of this you start hating the identical sheep and identical backwater towns, and I was happier than I'd expected upon my arrival at Cork, mostly because I could get off the bus. Lee is studying abroad at University College Cork, and she had given me the name of the street her apartment was on. I was kind of nervous (no Dublin street I've been on has ever had its name written anywhere), so I asked the first person I saw outside the station. What part of the city was it in? Was it on this side of the river? Would I have to take a bus?

"Oh, just take the next right."

Cork is pretty small.
It is a gorgeous place, and feels a whole lot more "Irish" than Dublin. Now I feel REALLY bad I didn't take my camera. Oh well! I figure anyone who reads what I write is used to disappointment by now, so no biggie.

Here there be filler

In lieu of doing anything interesting this week, I have decided to study (and by study I mean compulsively refresh the Facebook window) instead of go out and spend money. After being swamped with suicide threats by grieving fans, I've written some preliminary tips for dealing with being a filthy foreigner here in Ireland.
1. Don't try speaking Irish, especially not the alternate station names on the Luas. It's a trick. The letters do not correspond with the sounds. Laoghaire sounds all cool and Irish, doesn't it? Reading it brings you fanciful notions of thatched cottages, sheep, low stone walls, and bog sacrifices? Well, it's pronounced "Leeree." Yeah. I just rocked your world.

I'll give you a moment to sit down, maybe catch your breath.


2. The supermarkets charge you for bags. You have the privilege of choosing between
A. 60 eurocent bags that will immediately break into tiny pieces while the cashier and everyone in the line look at you in disgust as you try to hide your tears, and
B. 1.25 Eurobux for "Deluxe Prestige" bags that will hold together until you are crossing a heavily-trafficked street.
Our RA told us that supermarkets were originally forced by the government to charge for bags as an incentive to help the environment (see point 3), but soon found charging so lucrative that they preferred it that way.

3. The Irish love the environment. Every building built after the late 1990s (pretty much every building outside the city centre) has a carbon footprint of zero. The Irish druidic practices (still active today thanks to a massive cultural revival in the late 20th century) need a clean environment to work, so you know they take their emissions seriously.

4. When walking through Dublin, you'll be told to "avoid being knocked down." 'Knocked down' is a cute Irish phrase for "viciously run over." The Irish don't like slowing down for frivolous reasons (eg. pedestrians), so be sure to strengthen those hip bones!

5. Most importantly, know what phrases not to use, the most notable one being "Have a nice day." This will be met by polite bewilderment at best and a hearty "The fuck do you care?" at worst. Americans are widely regarded as very optimistic and friendly, but many phrases Americans view as polite are likewise seen as insincere on this side of the Atlantic.

I should stop using so many parentheses

Yesterday Joe and I bought four tickets for the Hard Working Class Heroes music festival, assuming that Derrick and Adam would pay us back for two of them so they could go see a zillion up-and-coming bands with us. We figured Derrick's love for music and Adam's nice-guy nature would practically guarantee their paying us back. Unfortunately, Adam was all sad about Man U's crushing defeat by Liverpool (GO LIVERPOOL! GO ROBBIE KEANE! YEAH! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!), and Derrick was (I actually don't know about Derrick, since Joe and I agreed to get Derrick and Adam to pay us back, respectively). Eventually they gave in and we hitched the Luas to St. Stephen's Green and off to Temple Bar.
You've probably heard of Temple Bar, seeing how it's pretty much the most obnoxiously touristy place in Dublin. A tour bus brochure inside a tour bus that lost control and crashed through a window, ending up inside the Guinness Storehouse tour is less touristy than Temple Bar. I had no intention of ever going there, since all of the three Irish people I've spoken to during my stay here said it was a horrendous rip-off. Still, fate brought me there, via the IES scavenger hunt the day before yesterday (which I won, naturally). I can see why tourists like it. Temple Bar is gorgeous. It's both artsy (yet safe) and quaint, looking like what you'd get if you took Cambridge Square and Dublinized it. However, whatever merit the architecture and street performers lend it is nullified by the QUAINTE IRISHE TAVERNES that subsist entirely on washed-up retirees and hen parties (Irish bachelorette parties, where the average age is around 40) who guzzle Guinness (5 euros) after seeking reassurance from the bartender that no, it will not dissolve their Fixadent. Our show was going to be there, though, so we made the trip down to Temple Bar.
The festival consisted of six venues, each hosting a different band for about half an hour. This lasted from half 7 until midnight. That's a lot of bands, and we made our bravest effort to see as many as possible. Funny enough, by the end of the whole thing it was Derrick and Adam who were most impressed with the festival. I had a great time, but the loss of 20 euro made me so paranoid about my finances that I didn't even drink more than a pint (hi Mom!).
Such a grandiose Saturday left us without any plans for Sunday, though, and for some insane reason I found myself waking up at 9. I guess I'll try reaching Lee again before she goes off to Cork, forcing me to spend money visiting.
By the way, I didn't take pictures because I didn't bring my camera because I didn't want my camera to be stolen by some gypsie while I was distracted by a street performer. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

Day 3

Yesterday we made a trip to the Portobello (a pub that our superiors in IES couldn't praise highly enough) to watch the final Hurling match between Kilkenny and Waterford. Hurling isn't the same as the Olympic event. Think less nazi poster-boys throwing a concrete frisbee and more ultimate frisbee+golf+Irish people in short shorts beating the tar out of each other with shillelaghs. I won't go into the rules (despite any rumors you might have heard about my massive intellect, I am not Wikipedia), but it's an amazing game to watch. So, at the pub,Adam and Derrick each bet a pint against Joe that Waterford would beat Kilkenny. I almost made the same bet (the Waterford jerseys go remarkably well with my complexion), but my natural fear of becoming an enabler won out--this was fortunate, as Waterford got STOMPED. It was so horrible that even Joe ended up disliking the whole thing.
Today we went on an exodus to renew our Luas passes. Luas is the lightrail in Dublin. It works almost identically to the New Jersey Light Rail (as far as I know--I never actually bought tickets on the Jersey light rail, figuring the state authorities would probably spend the money on crack). In order to save valuable eurobux on ticket-scanning machines, the city opted instead to use an honor system. If you buy a ticket, you will board the train and feel like a chump. If you don't buy a ticket, you will board the train and immediately be accosted by hostile men in neon vests shouting incomprehensible shit straight out of Finnegan's Wake.
Thankfully, my roommates and I can avoid this lose/lose dilemma. We live in an area that requires use of the Luas to reach our classes, so IES reimburses us for the passes we buy. Unfortunately, this required us to walk all over the city, first going to the IES center to get proof of our being students, and then looking for some vaguely socialistic student discount ID card in order for IES to be more ballsy about giving us our money back for the Luas passes we spent $60 on. All in all, it took us about six hours to get some stupid train passes.

I think I'd rather be accosted.

WOW A REAL BLOG POST

Today (and by today I mean yesterday) I spent 27 euro to see everything a tourist should see in Dublin. IES took us on an optional bus tour, with a fleet of buses that made repeating loops around the city centre, letting you get off and take whatever tour happened to catch your fancy.
I wish I could remember what cathedrals these were.



These streets may look safe, but did you know they are packed with foreigners?



^I like this photo.^


This is the Irish General Post Office (or GPO), which the embattled Irish rebels made their headquarters during the Easter Rising of 1916. You can still see bullet holes on the pillars if you look closely enough.


Huh huh huh.


Jonathan Swift had inner ear problems later in life. Unfortunately for him, inner ear problems were interpreted as a form of insanity in the 18th Century. He bequeathed 7,000 pounds in his will to the building of a new mental hospital, St. Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles. I know.


QUAINT GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE (actually I'm not really sure what Georgian architecture even is)


Guinness was such a mainstay of Irish life, culture, and economy that a power outage at the Guinness factory would have been catastrophic. So what did Mr. Alec Guinness do? Why, build his own power plant, of course!

Guinness:Dublin;Mr. Burns:Springfield


This monument, although held in ill-regard by most Dubliners (who call it creative names such as The Stiletto in the Ghetto, The Spike I Don't Quite Like, and The Spire Everyone Kind of Hopes Will Burn Down in a Fire), seemed pretty neat the way the tour guide described it. It has thousands of light-emitting diodes embedded in the sides, making it a spectacular, yet tasteful light show packed full of symbolism and hope for Ireland's future. Either that or there aren't any diodes and it's just a tragic accident waiting to happen to some unlucky skydiver.


This is the most famous door in Dublin, an example of Edwardian architecture built to greet some king or other (only double-doors were allowed to accomodate royalty).


This is the house of the Taoiseach, the ruler of Ireland.




~~~~~~~~~DUBLIN ZOO~~~~~~~~~

SLOTH!


MONKEY!


WOMAN!


TAPIR!


DOGS!




ELEPHANTS!

I missed them when they were outside, hence the reflection. ugh im such an amateur


PENGUINS!


TIGER!


MONKEY reprise!


I'd like to end this horrendously long and informative post with a clever, heartfelt message summing everything up. Screw that, this took like an hour, I'm going to drink until I fall asleep.

FIELD TRIIIIIIIP

• We went to Glendalough today. It used to be a monastery, but was all converted into a cemetery in order to accommodate the growing amounts of dead people.

• Orientation was two hours long. Tomorrow’s is six hours long. I can’t even sleep thinking about it.
• My roommate Adam’s ankles are sore again. The dark purple spots on his foot have spread almost up to his calf. I think it’s the diabetes.
• 1 Euro steaks are awful.

Arrival

• When I was on Jet Blue I got some animal crackers. However, they were all the same shape (rhinoceros).
• I was first struck by culture shock an hour ago–I’m not sure if it was when the cashier at the grocery charged me 50 eurocents, or when I almost got hit by a car while looking the wrong way and trying to keep my bag from splitting in the rain. I think the most jarring element of culture shock is being lost to the extent that simple activities become insurmountable, simply because you can’t get anywhere.
  
  Also, I visited a quaint pub.
  
  
  
  

So yeah it's finally happening

I am packing! Packing is so fun.
Q: What shirts should I take?
A: Trick question! They will be stolen, so it does not matter.

One of my favorite quotes is that uttered by George Armstrong Custer: “Always be prepared.” With that in mind, I looked up Irish culture in Wikipedia.com so I could get ‘the lay of the land’ before going anywhere. The Irish are a proud race, known for their druidic ceremonies. Here are some Traditional Irish Blessings!

Sláinte!
“To Your Health!”

Croi follain agus gob fliuch.
“A healthy heart and a wet mouth!”

Go maire sibh bhur saol nua.
“May your home not be destroyed by sectarian warfare!”